Original reporting on little-known U.S. government funded foreign aid projects, so-called "drug war" initiatives, and overseas business subsidies.

Tanzania

11/29/2013

Supporters of Barack Obama tout his dedication to the responsibilities of the presidency by noting that he had taken 96 days of vacation at the point in his term that President George W. Bush had taken a reported 335.

But they admit that 51 of Bush’s trips were to his Texas ranch, while records show that Obama’s destinations have ranged from exotic European and African locales to pricey digs to Hawaii, where he’s sometimes traveled separately from his family, effectively doubling transportation costs for taxpayers.

The records released are partial, meaning no firm travel-expense total can be assembled. But individual cases are revealing.

09/08/2013

The Obama administration is seeking additional U.S. taxpayer
funds to provide more health services to Kenyans through a massive assistance
program that has already grown so “rapidly and exponentially” the U.S.
government now needs help from outside contractors to oversee it.

A Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm known for its work
with the United Nations Development Program, the European Union and the World
Bank has been hired by the administration to monitor, analyze and improve the
foreign-assistance program, known as the Evaluation Services and Program
Support endeavor.

The U.S. Agency for International Development has awarded a
contract potentially worth $23 million to International Business &
Technical Consultants, Inc., or IBTCI, which will provide such services when
called upon.

The new arrangement allows USAID/Kenya’s Office of
Population and Health Programs, or OPH, and USAID/East Africa’s Regional Health
and HIV/AIDS Office, or RHH, to issue separate work orders to the consulting
firm on an indefinite quantity, indefinite delivery basis.

The initiative emphasizes “Kenya is a priority country for
The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and receives
significant funding to address HIV/AIDS and related problems. Similarly,
resources available from the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) assure
continued funding for malaria programs.”

Despite this consistent flow of funding, Kenya wants more.

USAID says key target groups among the Kenyan population
have reached plateaus or have seen declines in measurements of Kenyans’ health.

Kenya consequently intends to “seek additional funding to
balance the current program to increase coverage for family planning, maternal,
neonatal, and child health, nutrition/food security, and safe water and
hygiene.”

This agency unit likewise is working “in close
collaboration” with U.S. government counterparts at the Centers for Disease
Control and the departments of Defense and State “to accelerate the scale-up of
proven high-impact and low-cost public health programming.”

Although USAID admittedly cannot adequately manage the
voluminous initiatives it has launched in Kenya, cost-wise overall aid dropped
from a high of $830 million in 2009 to $460 million in 2013.

Despite the administration’s emphasis on Kenyan health
programs, there is another component to the initiative: the implementation of
Kenya’s new constitution, which requires greater decentralization of the
national government and expansion of the county governmental system.

While the overarching goal “is to focus on the establishment
of a sustainable national health system for all Kenyans,” it also must maintain
“strong linkages” to other governmental and societal sectors “that impact
health but have conventionally been perceived as outside of the control of the
health sector.”

U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor has reported over the past year
on various components of Obama’s Kenyan assistance scheme.

Those exclusive Monitor reports (some which originally
appeared via WND.com and were reprinted here by the author) led USAID to
eliminate public access to a critical planning document governing a U.S.
propaganda initiative known as the USAID/Kenya Strategic Communications Plan
2012-2013.

Publicly available documents revealing the Obama administration’s
unwieldy portfolio of Kenyan projects – which includes a formal plan to
manipulate Kenyan and global media – were removed from a federal contracting
database, the Monitor discovered.

The agency likewise revamped one of its solicitations for
industry proposals, modifying the project to make it an East African rather
than a Kenyan-only endeavor.

However, the Monitor discovered the government merely
repackaged and re-released it, expanding the potential geographic reach of the
initiative while limiting it to health-related projects.

USAID also plans to spend up to $50 million to strengthen
Kenya’s county governments, as the Monitor previously reported.

Though the effort could help redistribute political power
across the African republic, whose national government is viewed as one of the
most notoriously corrupt in the world, the administration acknowledged the
process may inadvertently create 47 equally corrupt county systems.

The Monitor reported Obama also is embarking upon a
nationwide reading project that aims to improve the skills of children in tens
of thousands of Kenyan schools.

The administration furthermore launched new peace
initiatives in and around Kenya, despite acknowledging that chronic cattle
rustling and other cultural practices – such as killing rivals “to prove their
manhood or impress young women” – might impede progress.

07/31/2013

Bureaucracy proposed to overcome Kenyan obstacles

President Obama’s multi-billion-dollar “Power Africa”
initiative aims to double citizen access to electricity and other power sources
across Sub-Saharan Africa. But it plays down the creation of a new
public-private bureaucracy needed to overcome the pervasive corruption and
incompetence of African governments and power utilities.

A significant portion of the Kenya-based endeavor is
designed simply to administer the program. Segments include efforts to sway
public and congressional opinion in favor of the initiative, according to a new
planning document U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor located through routine database research.

The U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID,
will hire a contractor or contractors primarily to persuade African officials
to change regulatory governance of power distribution, explains the draft
Statement of Work, or SOW. A corresponding agency goal is to encourage, with
contractor assistance, the escalation of private-sector investment in the
region.

The USAID chief of party, or COP, and deputy COP, “who will
be the overall managers of the contracts,” will reserve 10 percent of program
funding for those government managerial functions, the document says.

The project’s overarching goal “is to remove the power
constraint to economic growth and spur trade and investment, while mitigating
long-term greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions trajectories,” the draft SOW says.
“Power Africa will serve as a catalyst that will spark a transformation in
Africa’s energy and power sectors.

“The immediate outcome will be increased supply of and
access to reliable, affordable, and sustainable power for millions of Africans
and the enhanced responsible and transparent management of energy resources.”

Put in simpler terms, despite Obama’s ambitious and
confident proclamations about the endeavor during his recent Africa trip, the
document simultaneously affirms his vision and acknowledges the great
difficulties the U.S. faces in executing such reforms.

Among other factors, the weak regulatory, policy and legal
environments – made worse by continent-wide “corrupt and non-transparent
bidding and contractual procedures” – serve as constraints to the sort of
international investment Obama wants to bring about, the SOW says.

Political instability, a lengthy history of state-owned
utilities and the “fear of change and competition” likewise deter private
sector project-development and investment.

Consequently, the Obama administration expects U.S.
taxpayers over the next five years to commit $7 billion toward stabilizing and
correcting the investment roadblocks.

Whereas USAID will provide $285 million in technical
assistance to remedy what it admits are typically corrupt and often incompetent
governmental bodies and utility providers, the administration will direct the
remainder of the funds through other U.S. agencies.

Among the entities are the Export-Import Bank of the United
States, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation and the U.S. Trade &
Development Agency – entities that the Cato Institute says should be
“terminated” because they largely serve as monumental vehicles of “corporate
welfare waste.”

Reminiscent of a prior scheme to sway journalists into
providing favorable coverage of its Kenyan aid program – a document for which the
agency abruptly blocked public access following this writer's coverage of the matter – the USAID prime
contractor also must provide communications and outreach support that will be
“directed at the American public, U.S. Congress” and elsewhere, the draft SOW
says.

The agency kept the program quiet for a year before
repackaging it with decreased emphasis, according to publicly available
documents, on the propaganda angle, as the Monitor recently reported.

According to the Power Africa draft SOW, the selected vendor
must devote 20 percent of its efforts under the prime contract towards
“institutional support” for the program coordinator’s office.

Communications and outreach activities represent just one
component of institutional support, which also entails tracking and coordinating
activities among “Power Africa implementers and stakeholders” such as other
U.S. agencies, host country governments and non-governmental organizations, the
document says.

Although USAID’s East Africa Regional Mission in Nairobi,
Kenya, is home to the coordinator’s office, Power Africa also has plans for
Ethiopia, Ghana, Liberia, Mozambique, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda.

This article originally was published via WND.com (July 23, 2012). Under agreement with the editor, rights have reverted back to the author, Steve Peacock.

07/30/2013

Obama tries out high-tech play device in Tanzania while energy executives and the Tanzanian president look on.

The tail end of President Obama's Africa Trip -- which stopped in Tanzania, the third and final stop on this tour -- contributed $650,000 toward the reportedly $60-$100 million journey. And that was just for the hotel rooms, U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor has discovered.

According to a Justification and Approval for Other Than Full & Open Competition, or JOFOC, document that the Monitor located via routine database research, the U.S. Department of State requested "an estimated number of 179 single rooms intermittently from June 14 thru July 10, 2013.

The president and First Lady Michelle Obama stayed in Tanzania July 1-2. State justified booking all of those rooms for several weeks, however, based on its assessment that:

Hotels are predicting 100% occupancy due to bookings from the USG [U.S. government] and other high level VIP delegations from other countries. In order to fulfill our requirement, the USG is renting nearly the entire hotel and is utilizing a variety of room types, which were negotiated at a one-price-fits-all rate which benefits the USG.

Requirements for rooms from the USG and other countries, coupled with the limited supply of suitable, available hotels in Dar Es Salaam, created a peak demand for rooms. Prices for rooms at the Hyatt for this visit are within the rates charged for similar rooms during this season and are similar to the prices received from other hotels. As such, the rates are the established market rates for this class of hotel.

State awarded the no-bid contract to Hyatt Dar Es Salaam because "Security concerns prohibit sufficient advanced notification of VIP travel to allow for sufficient time to conduct full and open competition," the document says.

State released the JOFOC document on July 26. It awarded the contract, however, June 19.

07/29/2013

President Obama’s multi-billion-dollar “Power Africa” initiative aims
to double citizen access to electricity and other power sources across
Sub-Saharan Africa. But it plays down the creation of a new
public-private bureaucracy needed to overcome the pervasive corruption
and incompetence of African governments and power utilities.

A significant portion of the Kenya-based endeavor is designed simply to administer the program. Segments include efforts to sway public and congressional opinion in favor of the initiative, according to a new planning document WND
located through routine database research.

07/27/2011

The U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) is looking for a contractor capable of developing a new analytical model to predict Internet usage and growth in thirty-two foreign nations, from "A" (Albania) to "Z" (Zimbabwe).

The ultimate goal is to estimate, using empirical data, the expansion of the number of unique individuals using the Internet on a weekly basis in these markets over the next five years. While various organizations have produced such estimates and prejections for sub-segments of the Internet market, such as mobile Internet use or fixed line broadband, BBG requires estimates of the growth of the entire Internet market, regardless of platform, including use via public access facilities.

Although the BBG attempted to justifiy why it wants a new predictive model, it did not specify why it needs -- nor what it intends to do -- with such a new mode of analysis. The agency said it would apply the model to Internet usage in the following nations: Afghanistan, Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Cameroon, China, Egypt, Georgia, Ghana, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Syria, Tanzania, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, Vietnam, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

The BBG said the selected contractor should be able to complete the work within an eight-week period. It did not offer an estimated cost of the project.